Rejections in general…

Here’s the thing, and I know how hard it can be to play this particular logic game with yourself, but I suggest you try if you haven’t yet…

Honestly, have you already written the best thing you’re ever going to write? Have you said all you have to say? If the answer’s yes, then Congratulations! You win at life. Now, I never want to read anything else you write, okay? After all, it’ll just be second rate now, right? So stop writing. Thanks.

For those of us who haven’t penned their finest work, who, like me, believe that you -never- stop improving as a writer and that there’s -always- something in them that needs to be said, listen up. Anyone who rejects something you submit is simply looking for something better. And that’s fine. It’s even reasonable, really. Lucky for you, then, my ever-improving never-shutting-up-going-to-be-writing-even-on-their-deathbed friends, you’re only a week or a month or a year from writing something better than that last thing you did.

That isn’t the way I see it, though. I think all writers have to believe that there’s nobody out there who can say the things you want to say, in the way you want them to be said, better than they can. You’ve got to believe that to your core, because the alternative is the belief that there’s somebody in the world right now cranking out your story better than you could ever hope to…

You’re right, though. Any of us could get hit by a bus or a utahraptor tomorrow and it’d be curtains. All the more reason to sit down every time and right the best damn thing you ever have.